At minute: 4.00Barry Finnegan’s talk beginsWhat is TTIP?: The Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership.What is Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)?: abolish independence of judiciary and equality before the law; overturn Irish, European and American court rulings; overturn Irish law and European Directives.

At minute: 12.00:EU Commissions’ proposals for a “reformed” ISDS called an Investor Court System (ICS) are simply a marketing message with no substance.

At minute: 16.38:ISDS examples from around the world which have overturned court judgements, the minimum wage, drinkable water laws and environmental regulation. Examples of ongoing ISDS cases against a franking ban, cigarette plain packaging, and protection of drinking water sources.

At minute: 24.47:What is the “negative list”?: all public services, and all laws and regulations are included in TTIP (and CETA) unless explicitly excluded at the start of negotiations.

At minute: 28.23:How will these free-investment deals be ratified?: May 13th 2016 will see the EU Council of Ministers vote by QMV on EU-Canada free-investment deal (CETA) similar to TTIP; then EU Parliament will be asked to vote; there will be no vote in the 28 Member State parliaments.

At minute: 32.02:Dealing with the TTIP myths: no jobs, no growth: EU Commission’s best case scenario for TTIP claims one twentieth of one percent economic growth per year (i.e. 0.05%); extra €545 per annum per family of four per year (i.e. €2.62 each per week); loss of 0.6% of EU jobs.

At minute: 39.32:Using more sensible economic model, Jeronim Capaldo shows 600,000 job losses and annual wage drops of €4,800 per year due to TTIP.

At minute: 40.35:TTIP will erode workers’ rights.

At minute: 43.35:EU’s “precautionary principle” under threat. USA wants it replaced with their “scientific method” (i.e. companies do their own research on chemical and other health and safety issues, their research is not made public, it is not published in peer-reviewed academic journals, even their own scientists do not share research with each other, and the government simply accepts it at fact).What is “regulatory harmonisation”?: all EU and US standards would be matched; most likely scenario: EU drops to low US farm, food, chemical, workers’ rights standards. Alternative is:What is “regulatory recognition”?: EU and US recognise each other’s regulations so we could not stop US products being sold in EU even if chemicals in them are banned in EU.

At minute: 48.19:Similar warnings to these on TTIP, were ignored for NAFTA: 20 years after the 1994 NAFTA free-investment deal: 40% of US medium farmers eliminated; €181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada; loss of 1 million U.S. jobs; growing income inequality; displacement of more than one million Mexican small farmers; and over $360 million paid to corporations after ISDS private arbitration tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public-interest policies.

At minute: 49.21:EU “precautionary principle” used to ban neonicotinoids under threat: where this chemical was banned recently, the bee population recovered; we need bees to pollinate 80% of what we eat.

At minute: 52. 50:Enforced privatisation of public services: Under CETA and TTIP, only “non-economic” public services will be protected from enforced privatisation. To be an “non-economic” service, (a) no fee can be charged to citizens at any point of consumption of the service, and (b) no private company can be offering that service in the “market”. Fine Gael and Labour have not protected health, education, water, workers’ rights or environmental law from attack under CETA (which is a finished EU-Canada free-investment deal).

At minute: 54.36:Irish farming to be attacked: (error in presentation: figure of 100,000 animals refers to chickens in sheds, not cattle (see for exampleCLICK HERE); the number of US beef cattle on operations with at least 500 head grew from 11.6 million in 2002 to 12.1 million in 2012; the average size of a US hog (pig) factory farm increased 68.4%, from 3,600 hogs in 1997 to nearly 6,100 in 2012: (see for example CLICK HERE); US farms are 16 times bigger than EU farms, and Irish farms are smaller again. How can Irish farmers compete with industrial factory farms: half of milk sold in USA comes from just under 4% of farms; 14 US dairy producers represented more than 60% of all dairy sales in 2012; four companies control 85% of beef sold in USA; three companies produce half of the chickens in the USA. European regulations on the use of chemicals, growth hormones and GMOs is the only thing protecting Ireland and Europe from US factory farms imports. TTIP would sweep away these regulations and allow US companies to sue in ISDS tribunals if we try to keep standards high.

At minute: 54.54:Resistance to TTIP is fertile: over 3.2 million Europeans have signed an online anti-TTIP petition CLICK HERE ; here in Ireland and across the Europe and the USA, academics, civil society groups and progressive politicians are organising protests, meetings and research to show how bad TTIP will be for our societies, our environment and our democracy. It can, and will be, defeated. (See below for links and more info.)